The Pause by John Larkin (Random House Australia)
PB RRP $19.99
ISBN 9780857981707
Also available as
an ebook
ISBN 9780857981714
Reviewed by Marian
McGuinness
Youth suicide -- a
hush … hush topic, a brave topic to write about, a necessary topic to write
about.
How many of us
have been personally touched by suicide? I have, twice, so it was with
hesitation that I began to read.
This YA story is
Declan’s story. He is 17 and in Year 11 at a selective high school. He is
witty, sensitive, a literature wiz and head over heels in love with Lisa. One
problem is that Lisa has a Tiger Mother, who Declan nicknames The Kraken. A
kraken who beats her daughter when she strays from her mother’s warped ways. A
kraken who confiscates her daughter’s phone and sends her away from Declan to
live in Hong Kong with her aunt.
Although there is
a parallel plot of Declan and Lisa (a bit like Romeo and Juliet), it is
primarily Declan’s story as he wonders if his ‘brief flicker of existence might
have meant something.’
Something dark
happened when Declan was 6, something that has been buried so deep in his
psyche that when he needed inner strength, it was too fragile to cope.
The narrative
moves back and forth, like a mind in chaos, until we as the reader are standing
with Declan, wracked with emotional pain, on the platform as the train
approaches. He intends to end the pain.
Graphic
descriptions? Yes. But they are in Declan’s mind in those nanoseconds of
decision -- the nanosecond of The Pause.
That short-long time to decide to live or to die, ‘… crying because I don’t
think I’m worth anything …’
With time out in a
psychiatric hospital, Declan starts to think about life. He thinks of the ‘wreckage’ he would have
left behind ‘in that moment of pure insanity …’ It is
through the kindness and understanding of strangers in his ward, in their own
dire personal situations, that Declan begins to heal.
Through Declan’s
breakdown, ‘I went nuts. It happens. It happened to me. It can happen to anyone
…’ his friends are given quiet permission to be open and frank about
themselves.
The positive
message is how this experience empowers Declan to own who he is; that he has
choices to make and responsibilities to others, but mostly to himself. He
learns that life is bittersweet, but you can cope, and that once you open
yourself to others and their lives you realise that people are not worth dying
for, they’re worth living for.
John Larkin is a
brave writer. The Pause is personal.
It’s as much Larkin’s story as it is Declan’s story. As you read, you come to
understand that the heart and soul of John Larkin becomes the heart and soul of
Declan. It is a story of hope and the beauty of relationships … because of one
essential concept … pause.
Larkin’s previous
novel, The Shadow Girl, won the
Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Young Adults.
